Week Eight - Evaluation & Authentication 27/04/07

Lecture
The World Wide Web is a fast and convenient way of exchanging information, anyone can create a website, and the World Wide Web can not be controlled by anyone. Who publishes relates to authorship, authority and authenticity. Why publishers publish relates to bias, accuracy and trustworthiness. What is published relates to currency, reliability and coverage. Anybody can create anything on the web. Often it is hard to find authorship on a web page. Qualifications and sponsorships are not usually given. Most of the goals of sponsors and authors on web pages are unclear. Publication dates may not be provided and if provided it may mean something else. Web information can be made up.

Workshop
To evaluate sources we have to find authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency, coverage and the value of the site. We would need to find who are the authors, who is in charge of it, what gives them the authority to write it, is there a good reason to believe it, what is the point of view of the authors, what purpose the site gives, are the dates on the website there and is it updated often. The Psychedelic ‘60s and the Sixties Project was a good source of information, it was worth visiting if someone is researching the 60s, I think the website is accurate, the facts are documented, the sites purpose and point of view tells us what happened in the 60s and these websites were designed for the web.

Readings
The website Thinking Critically about World Wide Web Resources by Esther Grassian is about the World Wide Web content, evaluating websites, sources, dates and structure.
The website Evaluating Internet Research Sources by Robert Harris is about evaluating information from websites and its quality. It tells us about credibility, author’s credentials, quality control, accuracy, time, comprehensiveness, audience, purpose, fairness, objectivity, moderateness, consistency, world view, support and corroboration.
The website Evaluation Criteria is by Susan about authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency and coverage.
The website Evaluating Information found on the Internet by Elizabeth E. Kirk is about authorship, publishing, point of views, bias, references, accuracy and currency.
The website Five Criteria for Evaluating Web pages by Jim Kapoun is about accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency and coverage of web documents.

Summary
Looked at ICYouSee website and read the critical thinking page. I summarised the strategies for evaluating information found on websites in my own words. Read all the articles on the 60’s on the same website. I chose two to evaluate to see if they are authentic. And I summarised all the readings for this week on evaluation and authentication.